A robotic airbrush apparatus is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,864,966 to Anderson et al. In that disclosure, a robotic airbrush apparatus is shown that applies color, pigment or coatings to a two-dimensional surface in accordance with a preselected art work configuration. The apparatus comprises in combination a robotic arm, a support for the arm, an airbrush mounted on the arm, a quill having an open free end and a proximal end attached in fluid communication with the airbrush, a coatings pod acceptably bored for sliding engagement of the quill, a sensor mounted on the arm for determining the presence of the coatings pod, a coatings reservoir connected to the coatings pod by means of a flexible conduit, and a computer program, such as a punched mat, for movement of the robotic arm in open engagement of the quill and coatings pod and for movement of the airbrush together with the engaged quill and coatings pod in accordance with the preselected art work configuration. The apparatus also comprises a control valve on the airbrush and adjustable lever for opening and closing the control valve to adjust the amount of coatings to be projected through the airbrush. Programmable instructions are also provided for the robotic arm to activate the lever on the airbrush. The above described technique has only been applied to two-dimension, e.g., for painting t-shirts.
Although robots have found widespread application in spray coating, no known process or product is available for controlling robotic movement in precision coating applications automatically through an independent programming technique, except that which has been described above. In this context, precision coatings is interpreted to mean lines on the order of several millimeters or less in width. Robotic spraying technology is used extensively in industry, especially in the automotive industry. However, these applications are actually large area coating applications. In the case of the automotive industry, the application is to produce a uniform coating over an extensive area rather than a detailed coating in a small area. As a result, present robot end effectors for coatings application are nothing more than large area sprayers capable of being mounted on a robot arm. Because of the large area being sprayed, this can in effect be construed as a two-dimensional surface with respect to the sprayer. Prior art describes programming of the robot in ways such as punched mats, paper tape and magnetic media. This can be defined as "static programming" techniques wherein a programmer must manually key-in instructions, sequences and commands which control robotic movement and operation. The major disadvantage with this static programming technique is that it is time consuming, ties up resources and requires specialized knowledge. Such tying up of resources includes the inability to profitably use the equipment as it was intended during the programming period. Because of the inability to use available resources, profitably and overall manufacturing throughput are severely impacted.